In most wireless communication systems, the baseband signal at a receiver is converted from analog format into digital format so that the useful information can be recovered via a sequence of digital processes. The common device that achieves this conversion is an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). One of the most important specifications of an ADC is the number of output bits. In general, the more output bits the ADC has, the larger the dynamic range of the input signal the ADC can support. However, this results in a more expensive ADC, as well as the rest of the receiver components. Given the number of output bits, if the power of the input signal is too large, the output of the ADC may be saturated. On the other hand, if the power of the input signal is too small, the input signal may be severely quantized. In both of these cases, the information to be recovered at the receiver may be lost. A common approach to solve this problem is to apply a dynamically adjustable gain amplifier in front of the ADC so that the input signal of the ADC can be maintained at a desired level. Typically, the adjustable gain is controlled using a closed-loop mechanism, as shown in FIG. 1, which is also called automatic gain control (AGC).
In practice, several requirements need to be considered when using AGC. AGC should be sufficiently fast to compensate for channel loss variation, but should be slow enough so as not to distort the signal envelope. AGC should not change the insertion phase of the radio (so as not to overload the de-rotation loop). AGC should also have a linear response (in dB-per-Volt). AGC is a closed-loop control system, so it has stability, settling time and overshoot concerns as well as other design issues to be considered. AGC is required to have control lines from the modem and often an additional digital-to-analog converter (DAC). In time division duplex (TDD) and Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) modes, the AGC has to re-adjust the radio gain very fast upon the occurrence of a big unknown step in incoming power. AGC requires a specific radio architecture with gain control, both of which adds cost and power consumption. AGC also has design trade offs between NF and IP3 especially in the presence of a big jammer. IP3 is a third order intercept point. NF is a noise figure. The higher the gain before the down-converter (demodulator) the better (lower) the NF, but the IP3 is also lowered (which is not good). In practice, some of the above requirements are difficult to achieve. Certain trade-offs have to be made, resulting in a loss of a certain amount of system level performance.